WASHINGTON - A bar manager who knew a slain Democratic National Committee staffer as a frequent customer provided new details to FOX 5 about the final hours of his life before he was killed.
Seth Rich was at Lou's City Bar in Columbia Heights on the night before he was murdered. Rich was a Green Bay Packers fan and a regular at the sports bar.
Once the bar closed at around 1:45 a.m. on July 10, the 27-year-old walked out of the bar to the sidewalk and started talking with the manager. The manager on duty who knew the DNC employee very well asked him if he wanted a ride home knowing that he had about a mile walk to his home. The manager said Rich declined the offer and decided to go to The Wonderland Ballroom located a couple blocks down the street. However, police cannot confirm that he was at that bar.
There were reports that Rich was highly intoxicated. But sources tell FOX 5 that those toxicology results are still not back. According to witnesses at Lou's City Bar, they said he had a couple of drinks. Police sources believe that the two hours after he left the bar, the alcohol he consumed would have already worn down.
Rich's walk home from Columbia Heights to his home in the Bloomingdale neighborhood would have roughly taken him 30 minutes. Rich was fatally shot as he was on the phone with his girlfriend at about 4:20 a.m. What happened from when he left Lou's City Bar or The Wonderland Ballroom to when he was gunned down remains unclear.
The group WikiLeaks has offered a $20,000 reward for any information that will lead to an arrest and a conviction in the case. That fueled rumors Rich's death may have been related to his work at the DNC.
Right now, sources said police still believe Rich's death was a robbery gone wrong and they have no evidence his death was related to his job.
Police sources close to the investigation also said that there have been seven arrests linked to armed robberies in the Bloomingdale neighborhood that happened just days before Rich was killed. Those arrests were made after the murder and there were three guns that were recovered after the apprehension.
However, none of those guns have matched with the ballistics in Rich's murder.
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